Since taking office in April last year, Najib has been seeking to liberalize the economy by easing restrictions on overseas investments and scaling back institutional privileges for the country's Muslim-Malay citizens.

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In conjunction with this discretion, communications restrictions and legal liability enable underwriters to provide information to institutional clients, while precluding access to the broader public.

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This makes them consistent with other measures to relax restrictions on the capital account such as the expansion of the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor scheme, which allows foreigners to bring portfolio investment capital into China but only in a carefully regulated manner.

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